Personal Thoughts on 2010 Blogging

Doing research for the 2010 Dishonest Reporter awards had me going back on a year´s worth of blogging. With the benefit of hindsight, I looked at posts in terms of the issues and angles I raised (and didn´t) and the way I expressed myself (memo to me: use more first-person).

So I had to switch gears mentally when a long-time reader asked about my personal favorite posts. Off the top of my head, here they are in no particular order:

• Little Girl Asks Big QuestionWhile taking my kids to school the day after Yom HaZikaron, the remembrance day for fallen soldiers, my daughter asked if there was going to be a war during the summer. I found myself answering her at a bus stop across the street from — of all places — the Mt. Herzl military cemetery.

It's one thing to blog these kinds of questions, but responding to an eight year-old girl is completely different. Sharing the experience online required a different, more personal kind of writing, and the timing made it especially appropo.

I spent 45 minutes on the phone with HonestReporting's founding editor, Shraga Simmons making sure my logic was airtight. The resulting was a broader, more rewarding post than I anticipated, and the effort was worth it.

• Dead Photojournalist Waiting to HappenAugust's Lebanese border skirmish had me pumped for photo bias, and this post came after burning the midnight oil for a Case Study in Reuters Photography. The very next day, I spotted this Reuters photo. Karamallah Daher's access to the front from the Lebanese side was good — too good. It's a wonder Daher wasn't mistaken for a sniper. This could've been her last photograph.

The image speaks volumes about the thin line Israeli soldiers walk trying to discern — in split seconds — between journalists and legitimate threats. In contrast to the lengthy case study, this post was remarkably brief, and I'm gratified that it was Backspin's most-read item.